Benedetti to deliver united Edinburgh Festival - and a new baby

It's a big year for Nicola Benedetti as she heads her second Festival programme shortly after her first baby is due

Nicola Benedetti was performing at the Edinburgh International Festival, long before she took over as director.

So during her first festival in 2023, the violinist was keen to consult its audiences and artists about its direction.

"We were the original festival, we ignited the spark," she says.

"It's easy to forget that. But it was the answer I got across three weeks of the festival, and afterwards, that there was a resounding need for unity, to come together to celebrate culture."

The Edinburgh International Festival began in 1947. Its first director Rudolf Bing was an Austrian Jew who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and who saw the festival as a way to heal the wounds of war through culture.

As the first Scot and the first woman to be appointed director, Nicola Benedetti is an important part of that history but she's also keen to learn from it.

The audience will sit on the floor amongst the musicians at the Usher Hall for more beanbag concerts

Early festivals offered audiences the opportunity to attend "open rehearsals", something Benedetti has been reviving.

Beanbag concerts

Scottish Opera will perform a promenade version of Oedipus Rex in the National Museum of Scotland with a hundred-strong community choir.

Last year's beanbag concerts - where audiences sit amongst the musicians on the floor of the Usher Hall - will return with the addition of full concert performances. There'll be post show talks, and a virtual reality experience inside an orchestra.

Three ensembles will be in residence across the festival including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker and the São Paulo based collective Ilumina.

Contemporary music will include Bat for Lashes, Chilli Gonzales and Youssou N'Dour as well as Cat Power who will recreate Bob Dylan's 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.

Scots actor Jack Lowden will return to the Scottish stage for the first time since his debut in Black Watch in 2010, with the world premiere of a new play The Fifth Step in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland.

Jack Lowden will return to the Scottish stage with the world premiere of a new play The Fifth Step

Peruvian theatre company Teatro La Plaza explore Hamlet through the eyes of the Down's Syndrome community and Amy Liptrot's memoir The Outrun, about a young woman returning to Orkney to recover from a decade of addiction will have its world premiere at the festival.

In all there are more than 2,000 performers from 42 different nations.

São Paulo-based collective Ilumina are due to perform

"I'm really keen to create as much of an open atmosphere as I can," she says.

"We have some of the world's greatest artists in Edinburgh for a condensed period of time. I want to give access to them - as long as they're comfortable with that - to as many people as possible. That's surely part of the gift the festival can bring."

She says the festival is working on financial barriers. She points to the fact that 50% of tickets for this year's event are £30 or under, and free tickets are available for young musicians. But she believes the next move is for audiences to make.

"It must feel like shared ownership, audience and artists alike."

"They must feel they have a hand in the festival of the future."

This year also sees the return of an open air event for up to ten thousand people.

Teatro La Plaza explore Hamlet through the eyes of the Down's Syndrome community

Sponsored by whisky brand The Macallan, details have yet to be announced but Benedetti hints that it will celebrate craftsmanship and patience, and the mythology of Scotland.

And it's not the only big event which Nicola Benedetti is expecting this year. She and her husband are expecting their first baby. She hopes to be back in post as director and performer by August.

"I've not done this before so it's going to be all about learning," she laughs.

"I think to remain flexible will be the most important thing. There's such incredible support from the whole team at the festival to make sure we work together. And at the moment my violin will be coming out at least once."